A new L.A. County study will use blood tests for antibodies to the coronavirus to give officials a better sense of how COVID-19 has spread, how deadly it is and whether social distancing is working.
could paint the most complete picture yet of the sweep of the pandemic in the nation’s most populous county.
With the new blood tests, scientists hope to trace antibodies, which the body develops to fend off the coronavirus and linger after it is gone.The presence of those antibodies probably offers some protection against reinfection, although it is not yet known the extent to which people would be immune from the virus.
Using antibody testing over time could also illuminate the effects of the aggressive physical distancing measures in Los Angeles and across most of the country — a step that has brought nearly all economic activity to a halt. If the rate of infection continues to climb in the population even with these measures in place, it may prompt politicians to rethink their usefulness in the face of massive job losses.
The dearth of information threatened to hamper hospitals’ ability to prepare for the virus last month, as the wave of cases began to swell. Spellberg said the results pushed him to escalate his planning for needed personal protective equipment and hospital beds. The county also took notice. “This was the first-of-a-kind, large attempt to measure how many people in a large county have been infected,” said Eran Bendavid, a specialist in infectious disease and professor at the Stanford Health Policy program, who is leading the project in conjunction with the county public health office.
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